Understanding the Need for a Marketing Mindset Shift
The key takeaway is marketers must stop relying on old tactics and instead focus on aligning marketing actions directly with clear pipeline goals. Tessa Barron, formerly Senior Vice President of Marketing at ON24, stresses that doing more of the same will not yield better results. Since the pandemic, buyer behavior and expectations have evolved, yet many marketers continue using the same approaches from three or four years ago. For example, instead of scheduling four webinars in Q1 without clear purpose, set a target like reaching X number of new accounts or a 10% uplift in pipeline. This goal-first approach helps you ask critical questions such as how to improve conversion rates by 10% and what content best drives those conversions. Marketers should shift from tactic-oriented to goal-oriented thinking, focusing on the outcomes data supports rather than the activity itself.
Identifying Key Buyer Signals to Improve Conversion Rates
Marketers have access to vast amounts of data, but much of it is noise unless filtered down to meaningful “signals” that indicate buyer readiness. Tessa highlights ON24’s use of interactive webinar features—polls, surveys, call-to – actions, and Q&As—that generate over 20 engagement types, helping marketers uncover buyer intent. For instance, a tech company found prospects using a specific cloud provider were 10 times more likely to convert. By asking webinar attendees “what cloud provider are you using?” they identified high-potential leads early. Similarly, a pharmaceutical firm targeted doctors by asking about patient risk levels, where doctors indicating “high” risk signaled a strong need for follow-up. These examples demonstrate how strategic data capture tied to end goals increases pipeline efficiency and conversion.
Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams on Pipeline Goals
Tessa emphasizes the importance of collaboration between marketing and sales to effectively drive pipeline growth. Marketers often ask questions focused on content quality, but these may miss what truly qualifies a lead. Instead, marketers should engage sales teams to learn what qualifying questions they ask prospects on the front lines. Salespeople understand buyer doubts, needs, and objections firsthand, providing invaluable insights to refine marketing data collection and messaging. While marketers create “nets” of signals to catch potential pipeline leads, sales teams are the ones actually converting those leads into opportunities. Clear alignment ensures marketing delivers a precise profile of prospects before sales outreach, improving overall pipeline conversion rates.
Using a Framework to Create Relevant Messaging for Leads
Tessa shares a clear three-step framework used by ON24 to craft messaging that resonates at each stage of the buyer lifecycle. First, define the lead profile with supporting data to ensure quality targeting. Second, segment leads by their lifecycle stage to group similar prospects. Third, tailor messaging for each stage, coordinating what sales, SDRs, and marketers communicate. While pipeline creation is sales-driven, marketers influence the intermediate steps through targeted messaging and user experience improvements, such as shortening lead forms or adding interactive content. Small optimizations here can boost conversion rates significantly by guiding leads smoothly through the funnel.
Presenting Data
Presenting Data to Stakeholders to Drive Actionable Insights. With overwhelming amounts of marketing data available, Tessa advises focusing only on the metrics that directly support your pipeline goals. Present this data simply and visually to stakeholders outside marketing and sales, so they understand if key metrics are trending up or down. This clarity helps justify budgets and strategy decisions by showing tangible impacts on pipeline growth. Aligning everyone on the same data strategy creates organizational buy-in and streamlines efforts toward shared objectives. The focus should always be on what matters most to driving conversions and pipeline, cutting through the noise to deliver actionable insights.
Implementation Checklist
Checklist of Marketing Setup Tasks with Deadlines. – By week 1: Review current marketing tactics and assess if activities remain unchanged from 3-4 years ago. Identify outdated approaches. – By week 2: Define specific pipeline goals for the upcoming quarter, such as target number of new accounts or percentage uplift in conversions. – By week 3: Collaborate with sales teams to understand lead qualification criteria and buyer objections to refine data collection questions. – By week 4: Audit existing content and engagement tools (webinars, polls, surveys) to ensure they capture key buyer signals aligned with goals. – By week 5: Develop segmented messaging frameworks tailored to each lead lifecycle stage, coordinating with sales and SDR teams. – By week 6: Simplify lead capture forms and add interactive content elements proven to increase engagement and conversion rates. – By week 7: Create visual, goal-focused dashboards for stakeholders showing pipeline impact metrics and budget correlations. – Ongoing: Regularly review data signals and adjust tactics based on conversion performance and sales feedback. Following this checklist ensures a goal-oriented marketing data strategy that drives pipeline growth efficiently, even in a resource-constrained environment. This approach moves beyond “doing more with less” to fundamentally changing how marketing uses data to create measurable business impact. For deeper insights, marketers can listen to the full Data-Driven Decisions podcast featuring Tessa Barron at Convince & Convert.
